Impact of Temporality and Identifiability in Online Deliberations on Discussion Quality: An Experimental Study

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    12 Citations (Scopus)
    50 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    There is a perception that citizen deliberation brings about higher-quality discussions than discussions where deliberative norms are not used. Often, deliberations are realised in mini-publics in which certain contextual features ensure, a priori, that the discussions are likely to be of a high quality. However, few studies have as yet explored the boundaries of deliberation; that is, contemplated what happens to discussion quality if the ideal-speech situation is strayed away from. To address this point, this article reports on an online experiment in which the discursive setting of citizen deliberations is manipulated. The experiment (n = 50 participants) was carried out online in Finland in November 2013 in order to test the impact on discussion quality related to two factors: the temporality (asynchronous or synchronous discussions) and identifiability of participants (known or anonymous) in an online deliberation. The findings clearly indicate that asynchronous discussions have the most positive influence on discussion quality. Moreover, the identifiability factor only had all weak influence on discussion quality, and there was only one weak interaction effect between the two factors.
    Original languageUndefined/Unknown
    Pages (from-to)164–180
    JournalJavnost: the Public
    Volume22
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2015
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Keywords

    • online deliberation
    • quality of discussion
    • temporality
    • identifiability
    • Finland

    Cite this